


Maybe a Little Lost in Translation

by Jessyn



Series: Lost in Translation [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game), The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: An indulgence in bad writing, Companion Piece, F/M, Fueled by too much caffeine on a work night, I Don't Even Know, I haven't gotten that far yet, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm taking MASSIVE characterization liberties, Mandalorian/Star Wars: The Old Republic crossover, Okay an indulgence in GOOD writing, Please Don't Kill Me, Ridiculously old Legends EU references, Sorry Not Sorry, i'm a terrible human being, maybe smut, started as a fever dream and then kept going
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:29:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29482986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessyn/pseuds/Jessyn
Summary: A companion piece to Not so Lost in Translation ( https://archiveofourown.org/works/28331799 ). Each one can be read as a stand alone work, though I do recommend reading them either in tandem or Not so Lost first. Your choice (Not So Lost has more to read right now anyway).This started out as something just to scratch an itch, and ... now I'm some stupid number of pages in, and it keeps growing. I'm terrible at tags, I'm terrible at summaries, and I'm a terrible person for even considering this, but it would/will not go away, so if I have to suffer, you do too.Because I'm a sick and twisted person, Din Djarin gets to pick up not only Grogu, but my Sith Marauder from The Old Republic as well. Aside from the obvious, it's reasonably canon/story compliant for The Mandalorian, though I'll own that some of my own theories are working their way in. Things happen, they all catch feels, and I have no idea where I'm going with this. I'm legitimately just writing up the incident reports, as the meme goes.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Lost in Translation [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2215617
Comments: 9
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that as this piece progresses, character POVs will change. I'll make sure to mark them accordingly and give ample warning when they do. Out the gate, it's mostly from Din's perspective.

Din

I don't know what I'd expected when the Imp had handed me the fobs, but the petite, red-skinned woman and the tiny... gremlin with her were definitely not it. I frowned, and glanced between the data on the fobs and the quarry in front of me.

No way in hell that woman was over three thousand years old.

I was only half aware of the conversation I was having with the droid until it brought it's rifle up to bear on them. “Wait. The contact said they needed to be taken alive.”

“Negative, bounty hunter.” Fucking IG units. “The contract explicitly stated the quarries were to be terminated on capture.” A single shot barked, and the IG unit crashed to the ground next to me.

“It's alright,” I said, trying to sound reassuring as I sheathed my blaster. “I'm not going to hurt you. Either of you.” I held my hand out as the woman straightened from where she'd flung herself over the egg-shaped pod.

“I'm glad to hear that,” she replied. She sounded croaky, like she'd been sick or recently asleep. “I assume you're here for the bounties on us both.”

“That's right.” I tried not to sound too surprised. Not very often my quarry was so calm or astute about things.

“Well, let's get this over with then. After you.”

Huh.

~~*~~

It was a huge relief to leave Arvala 7. Between the Jawas, that kriffing mudhorn, and having to put the _Crest_ back together, if I never went back to that hellhole, it would be too soon. The woman had been surprisingly compliant throughout the ordeal, downright helpful at points. She did an admirable job of keeping whatever that kid was occupied while the Ugnaught and I fixed the ship, asking for little beyond the occasional cup of water or ration pack and generally not speaking unless spoken to first. I knew she'd heard me talking to the Ugnaught about whatever the kid had done, but hadn't asked about it. Even when I admitted the kid saved my life.

I'd found myself watching her probably more than I should have, considering the two of them were a job. She was an odd little thing, and not just because of her looks, which admittedly were striking, if not conventionally pretty. Certainly not a species I was familiar with, which said a lot. It was how she handled herself that got my attention though, all quiet manners and gentleness towards the kid wrapped around a solid durasteel core. Not a single thing had shaken her while we were planetside.

Whatever she was, she was no civilian.

“Fresher is on the lower deck,” I told her, once we'd jumped to hyperspace. “Go ahead and use it now, before I put you in carbonite.”

“If it's all the same to you,” she replied quietly. The kid was curled up asleep on her chest. “I'd rather not. Three thousand odd years in that stuff is more than enough, thanks. I won't cause you any trouble.”

“Well, that explains that,” I muttered. Guess the fob had been right. I considered her words for a moment, then took them at face value. She hadn't given me any issues when there was actually somewhere for her to go, and she didn't strike me as one to cause problems while trapped on a strange ship.

And she didn't. We landed on Navarro a couple of days later without incident.

To date, these were the strangest two bounties I'd ever picked up.

~~*~~


	2. Chapter 2

“Please, let me examine him.” Pershing was timid but polite enough when he asked the woman to move so he could look at the kid, once the stormtroopers used their collective brain cell and followed orders. I watched, intrigued, as she narrowed her eyes at him and stayed put.

“Why?” The way she said it made it sound like a demand, as if she were used to being obeyed without question. I frowned behind my helmet when one of the troopers shoved her. The kid made a distressed noise as she fell.

“Shut up and follow instructions,” the trooper snapped at her. Some small part of me winced as the side of her head hit the ground – she had pronounced eyebrow and cheekbone ridges, with piercings accenting each. Landing as hard as she did had to have hurt.

“Come here and I'll show you how,” she hissed defiantly, already halfway back to her feet. So there was a temper under there too. Huh. The trooper got a solid kick to her ribs in before the contact called him off.

“Enough. Take her back with the child.”

“What are you going to do with them?” I turned my attention back to the officer. He was already opening the camtono, two neat stacks of beskar ingots inside. The whole reason I'd even taken the job.

“You have accepted both commission and payment,” he wheezed. “Is it not the code of the Guild that these events are now forgotten?”

Yeah, it was. But it was also part of the Way that kids are properly looked after, and I had no illusions about how they'd probably treat this one.

~~*~~

I didn't exactly blame Paz for his reaction. I hadn't _wanted_ to take an Imp's contract, but the chance to get the beskar back into Mandalorian hands wasn't what you could call a common opportunity. Even if it meant handing a child over to them. One kid and his caretaker against the well-being of the entire covert. That wasn't even a choice.

Except the longer I sat and thought about it, the less okay I was with the decision.

I remembered, vividly, the day the Tribe found me. How they'd treated me as their own, even before I was old enough to take the Creed. Taught me the language, the history, how to defend myself and my clan. Family and clan first, all else second. The foundation a scared little kid needed to find his feet.

That tiny little thing had looked terrified as he and the woman were dragged away.

One kid and his caretaker against the well-being of the entire covert.

~~*~~

I tried not to think about her or the kid too much once the hand off had been completed. Guild code and all that. But I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something inherently _wrong_ about the job, morality aside. Yeah, they were a couple of unknown or extremely rare aliens, but the Empire was very pro-human and had never been shy about reinforcing that. What would they want with those two?

Better to get away from Navarro and move on with the next job; the beskar had been a windfall for the covert, but beskar wouldn't keep the foundlings fed. I had work to do.

Foundlings. Some of them not much older, developmentally anyway, than that weird little gremlin. What the kriff was I doing, leaving the little guy to the tender mercies of the Empire?

I sighed and shut down the _Crest,_ engaging security protocols from my wrist control before my better judgment could kick in. If I got myself killed pulling them out of there, the covert would be fine; Paz was itching to get out anyway.

~~*~~


	3. Chapter 3

“Where is she?” I growled, pistol leveled at Pershing. The man was cowering before me, the kid unconscious on the exam table just to my right.

“Please, if not for me, they'd already be dead! I did what I could!” Begging. I had to remind myself that the man was a lab scientist and was likely pissing himself in fear.

“Where is she?!” I demanded again.

“I'm here.” If it wasn't for the amplifiers in my helmet, I never would have heard her. She was clinging to the door frame across the exam room, obviously staying upright out of sheer force of will. I scooped the kid off the exam table on my way to her.

“Hold him,” I said, pressing the baby into her arms. Her grip faltered; I took her by the wrist and gently wrapped her arm around the kid. I was glad of the helmet – it meant she couldn't see the frown of concern. The fuck had they been doing to them?

I suppressed a growl and took her other hand, placing it on the small of my back. I felt her fingers hook over the edge of my belt, and got us the hell out of there.

~~*~~

“How about you set them on the speeder, Mando, and we let you live?”

I sighed. Leave it to Karga to make things more difficult than they needed to be.

I didn't have a lot to work with – guild members had us surrounded, there was a speeder half filled with crates, an out of date astromech hooked up to the engine, a couple of empty merchants stalls. The kid was still out cold, and the woman, resilient as she'd been, was starting to fade. Impressive little thing to have kept it together for as weak as they'd left her.

I eased her down onto one of the crates and tucked her other arm around the kid. There was the briefest of moments where I thought I felt her shoulders drop in defeat, but it was gone before I could be sure.

“Thank you,” she whispered, again barely audible but for the helmet amplifiers. “I appreciate you trying.”

Durasteel? No. This one had a spine of pure beskar.

“Who said I was giving up?” I murmured back, then pushed her backward into the bed of the speeder and flung myself up and over, landing on top of her as I shouted at the astromech to drive.

Someone shot the droid before we could get more than a few meters, the speeder crashing into a haphazard pile of shipping crates as the blaster fire petered out into silence. Slowly, I pulled the Amben off my back, easing the barrel between a couple of boxes as I lined up a shot. As the rifle recoiled, I did my best to ignore the reminder that there was someone underneath me.

I took another shot, then a third. I was lining up the fourth when she hissed a warning in time for me to shoot two rooftop opportunists with my pistol.

I swore as the Guild started firing on us again. I let my head drop for a moment out of frustration before returning fire and tried to bury the sick feeling of defeat in my gut.

“Go!” Paz Viszla's voice cut through the roar of jet packs and blasters. “We'll cover you!”

I looked up to see most of the covert's warriors at various altitudes, laying down covering fire to provide an escape route to the _Crest_. I closed my eyes for a moment in guilt threaded thanks. I would have understood if they'd let the Guild kill me to keep the tribe safe.

“We'll have to relocate the covert!” I yelled in reply.

Paz nodded solemnly at me. “This is the Way!”

“This is the Way.” I hoped it didn't sound like the epitaph I knew it was going to be.

~~*~~

I dropped my head back and sagged into my seat as the bright blue streaks of hyperspace illuminated the cockpit. Blessedly, my new passengers weren't much for idle conversation, which gave me a moment to let the reality of what I'd done sink in.

I'd just placed the entire covert at risk. Nullified my contract with the Guild, which had been the primary source of income for the covert as a whole. Kidnapped two potentially defenseless beings of unknown origin, then jumped to hyperspace with no plan, no supplies, and no support network.

But.

When I turned in my seat, the sight of the kid curled up on his caretaker's chest tugged at something in the back of my mind. I didn't examine it too closely; there was enough I had to sort out as it was.

I did, however, take a minute to really look at the elder of my two passengers. The brow and cheek ridges, combined with her slight figure and tightly braided hair, would have made her look severe had I not seen how she interacted with the kid. She'd fallen asleep curled up around him, feet tucked up on the seat so he was sheltered between her knees and torso – a protective posture if I'd ever seen one. I got up and grabbed one of the spare emergency blankets, then draped it over them before heading below to sack out.

The hyperspace timer pulled me out of my doze and I scrambled up to the cockpit, silencing it before the noise could wake my passengers. As far as I could tell, neither had moved very much in the intervening hours, save her having pulled the blanket up under her chin. She still looked pale, but not nearly to the same degree she had been when we jumped.

Not for the first time, I wondered who they were. Or, more specifically, who _she_ was, and why the Empire would want the kid. And badly enough to pay for them with beskar. Sure, the kid had those weird powers, but the girl? Nothing aside from her species seemed to make her special enough to warrant their attention.

Something shifted down in the hold, the grating noise followed by a shriek and a pattering sound. None of which were normal noises on my ship. The hell?

I heard another squeaky noise as my feet hit the lower deck. Blaster in hand, I ghosted my way through the hold. The ramp hadn't been down long enough on Navarro for me to have picked up a stray womp rat, but those things were faster than they looked and it wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

I stepped around a crate and heard a noise down near my ankles. Frowning, I looked down, only to be met with the wide-eyed gaze of the kid. I sighed and holstered my gun.

“What are you doing down here?” I moved to pick him up, and the little beast shrieked in what I thought was laughter and took off, heading toward the very back of the hold. Where the carbon freezer was. “Hey! Get back here!”

It took me longer than I cared to admit to catch the little guy. I finally had to resort to bribing him with a piece of bantha jerky, scooping him up off the deck and dropping him on top of a crate so he couldn't escape and go hide as easily.

I was definitely not cut out for this.

I heard someone swear, and I looked up toward the ladder just in time to see the girl land hard on her hip and forearm. I went to help her up, careful of where she'd landed on her arm, and wondered how she could have missed so many rungs.

“Shit, are you alright?” I asked. I led her to the crate where the kid was sitting, and helped her settle.

“I'm fine,” she replied in a clipped tone. Wounded pride, I could understand that. “Where's the baby?”

“He's here.” I plopped the kid in her lap, making sure she had hold of him before I let go. “Caught him tearing around the hold; I figured I'd give him something to eat and let you rest.”

“Thank you.” The smile that followed her words softened her features. The difference took me by surprise. “Shame on you for getting into things that aren't yours, little one,” she chastised, with all the motherly warmth that she'd had on Arvala 7. “You should be more respectful of our host.”

“It's... it's fine,” I said. The kid cooed at her, gigantic eyes jumping between the two of us. “I'll have to get some more webbing, strap things down better, that's all.”

I watched her for a long minute, and it occurred to me that she might be dealing with some lingering carbonite blindness. It would certainly explain why she'd missed the last several ladder rungs. If that was the case, it'd be to her benefit as well if I better secured what supplies I had.

“What – I mean...” I blurted, then stopped, clearing my throat. There were more tactful ways to ask. I tempered the rampant curiosity in my voice and tried again, more gently. “I've never seen a species like you. Either of you.”

Her expression told me she'd been expecting something along those lines. “I don't know about the wee thing,” she started, slowly. “Even in my time his species was rare, and I never learned anything about them other than that they exist.”

“And you?” I had the feeling I was going to have some research to do.

“Sith. Pureblood, maybe one of the last, given it's been so long.”

“Huh.” A what? “Never heard of that one.”

~~*~~


	4. Chapter 4

We'd been in the village on Sorgan for a couple of weeks when two things happened: the kid's caretaker caught a cold, and I started referring to her as Udesla in my head. Seemed fitting, given her unflappable demeanor, and felt less derogatory than “Red,” since she hadn't given me her name.

To be fair, she didn't have mine either, but given that the wider galaxy just used “Mando” it was less of an issue.

“You seem to care about her an awful lot for someone who professes not to.” Dune was leaning against the door frame. I'd just put the kid down for a nap in the borrowed cradle, and had taken a moment to check on Udesla before returning to the makeshift shooting range.

I sighed as I turned to face her. “She's my responsibility, of course I care,” I grumbled.

“That's not what I meant and you know it, Mando.” Dune pushed herself off the door frame as I approached, walking with me toward the shooting range. “Caring because you're being responsible is one thing. Genuinely caring about her well-being like you do is something else.”

She got a face-full of blank mask in response, but it got the point across if her grin was an indication.

“It's not just 'cause she looks after the kid, either,” she continued blithely. “You think that helmet hides more than it does.”

I sighed and pulled a rifle from the crate. There was very little I could say to that, because in all honesty, Cara was right. Not that I really wanted to examine it all that closely.

“She's not hard on the eyes, either.” Damn this woman. I ground my teeth and kept shooting. “Seems amazingly comfortable around you for only having known you a couple weeks, too. If I didn't know any better, I'd say something happened in hyperspace you're not telling me about.”

I turned my head and stared at her, momentarily at a loss.

“What?!” She gave me an impish smirk. “I'm just saying. If you're not interested, maybe I should be.”

I stared at her for another minute, then slowly turned my head back to what I was doing. If I hadn't already made this thrice damned village a promise, I would have hauled Udesla and the kid back to the _Crest_ right then.

“Don't you have drills to be running?” I growled. Dune cackled and headed off.

I shook my head and sighted in once more. That Cara could read me so easily was disconcerting, but also weirdly comforting. She was so direct in manner she could almost pass as Mandalorian. Between that and the shared loss of our respective communities... I shrugged off the line of thought. There were more important things to focus on.

Like how we were going to keep the noncombatants safe while we pulled this off.

~~*~~

The weather had warmed enough over the next week that Udesla had gotten over her cold and returned to child care duties. Omera had left a plate for me in the barn, and with everyone out enjoying the sun, I'd taken the chance to shave and eat. And air out the lining in the helmet – a hazard of having to wear it so much was that it got a bit musty.

I watched as Udesla let the kids lead her in some sort of circle game, her steps overly careful for just trying to avoid stepping on anyone. I frowned – she'd been out of carbonite more than long enough now for her sight to completely return. Hadn't she?

Omera approached the group, calling to her daughter. Udesla shooed the kid along, smiling warmly in her mother's direction, but the line of her gaze didn't match up to the taller woman's eyes. Huh. I made a mental note to better secure the hold once we were back on the _Crest_ , and returned my attention to my meal.

The sound of the kids outside laughing while they played was... almost cathartic. I felt guilty listening; my decision to rescue the kid, and by necessity Udesla, had stolen that sense of safety from the foundlings of the covert. But it had also given it to this weird little gremlin child, and if I knew anything, it was that the tribe had gotten the foundlings to a safe place. They'd get to have this again, and I could live with the guilt of momentarily stealing it if it meant I could give the same to the kid.

I heard the kids shriek joyous sounds of disgust and guessed that Munchkin had probably tried to eat another frog. Udesla's laughter overlaid their shrieking, followed by the sounds of running feet. I shook my head, smiling softly around a mouthful of bread. That woman had a maternal streak a klick wide.

I finished eating, closing the seals on my helmet as I exited the barn with the plate in hand. One of the men was approaching Udesla – something about his movements got my hackles up. Got hers up too, if the change in how she held herself was any indication. There was a subtle shift in her expression, too, and something in the back of my head whispered _predator_.

I course corrected as he stopped in front of her, moving with purpose but not quickly. He hadn't done anything. Yet.

I swear on everything holy in the galaxy, I'd never seen someone move as fast as Udesla did. In the space of a heartbeat, she had the man on his knees. I picked up the pace, and as I approached got a much better look at what she was doing.

She had the idiot by the middle finger of one hand, standing behind him and twisting his arm so his palm was pointed toward the sky, with said finger bent backward toward his wrist. Omera and Cara caught up with me just as I got within earshot.

“If you ever lay a hand on someone again,” Udesla said, voice serenely terrifying, “you will lose it. Have I made myself clear?”

Something in my brain short-circuited and I stopped moving, along with the others. Well.

“Have I made myself clear?” she repeated, dangerously softly, tweaking the man's finger back a little farther when he didn't immediately respond.

“Y-yes! Perf-perfectly clear!” I almost thought the fool had wet himself in fear.

“Excellent.” Udesla released his hand and stepped back, utterly unruffled. She made a shooing motion with her hands. “Run along now, and think about what you've done.”

Uh. I mentally shook myself and suppressed the urge to readjust my armor.

Udesla turned to us, head slightly inclined and a pleasant smile on her face. “I don't think there will be any further issues with him, Omera,” she said lightly. “If there are, please do let me know?”

“Absolutely.” Omera's voice was warm as she took Udesla by the elbow and steered her toward the communal space of the village.

“That,” Cara muttered once the other women had moved off far enough, “was the hottest fucking thing I've ever seen.”

“Yeah.”

~~*~~


	5. Chapter 5

I wanted to refuse the vast majority of the supplies that were being loaded into the _Crest_. The village didn't have much to begin with, and while I understood their gratitude, tangible thanks weren't really necessary. Udesla stopped my protests with a hand on my shoulder, almost like she could read what I was feeling.

“Accept it gracefully,” she murmured, just loud enough for me to hear. Probably to avoid embarrassing the men who had taken us back to the ship and started loading it. “They would not give what they couldn't do without. Allow them this dignity.”

I sighed and nodded. She gave me a soft smile, patted my pauldron, and disappeared into the ship, kid in arms. Ultimately, she was right, and we _did_ need the supplies. The hammock in particular; I knew from experience that the flight chairs in the cockpit were not the most comfortable place to sleep.

Once we were safely into hyperspace – it still rankled that the bounty hunter got the drop on us – I set about tying up the hammock and making sure Udesla had at least a a semblance of her own space. She'd been remarkably respectful of mine, to the point where she'd not even asked about the helmet, and didn't seem inclined to. It was refreshing, really, since even my less-talkative bounties usually asked about it within the first ten minutes.

“So what's the plan?” She'd very carefully settled herself on a crate behind me while I worked, Munchkin perched on her shoulder and clinging to that impressive mass of hair. Some part of my brain wondered what it would be like to run my fingers through it before I could crush the thought.

“Head to Tattooine,” I grunted, testing the knots. “See if I can pick up a job. We're going to need fuel sooner than later.”

She made a noise of acknowledgment, though I could hear the distaste in her voice. I wasn't a big fan of Tattooine either, but I wasn't about to be picky. With Jabba the Hutt nearly ten years dead, the planet had become less of an underworld hub and more of a spacer's rest stop, but the chances of an off-books job were higher there than anywhere else in the parsec.

I hauled myself into the hammock to give the knots a final test. If it would hold me without slipping, it would definitely hold her, tiny little thing that she was. Satisfied, I dropped down and held my hands out for the kid so she could get things arranged how she liked.

Munchkin leapt at me from her shoulder. I took a half step forward and caught him before he could really start to fall, hoping like hell the spike of panic hadn't telegraphed through the movement. “Not funny,” I admonished. “Don't do that.”

Udesla chuckled as she slid off the crate. “He has complete faith that you won't let him fall,” she said. “Most kids would.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just a hunch.”

~~*~~

“Took you long enough, Mando.” I narrowed my eyes at Calican. The idiot had the balls to be standing on the ramp of my ship, blaster held to Peli's head, kid in her arms. Where was Udesla? “Looks like I'm the one calling the shots now, huh, _partner_?”

“Let them go,” I said, using the kind of quiet voice used with spooked blerg. This kid was green, he'd straight up admitted that Shand was his first job. I didn't want to shoot him, but I would if I had to.

“Uh, uh, uh,” he clucked. Smug asshole. “Drop your blaster and raise 'em.”

I mentally sighed; I had hoped to be able to talk him down, but it didn't look like that was going to happen. I crouched slowly, dropping my pistol in the sand. My visor HUD gave me a movement alert from behind him and I felt my lip twitch in a smile.

Calican snatched the kid from Peli's arms and gave her a pair of binders and a shove. “Cuff him.”

I palmed a flare from my belt as I raised my arms behind my head, Peli standing on tiptoe to reach my wrists. “You're smarter than you look,” she hissed. I rolled my eyes.

Udesla ghosted up behind Calican, clad in cropped leggings, a fitted tank, and bare feet. A satisfied, predatory grin spread across my face as she raised her cuffed wrists and brought the binders down hard on the back of his neck.

I threw the activated flare, shoving Peli down behind a pile of junk as my visor adjusted for the sudden light. I saw Udesla dive for Munchkin and roll, then I lost track of her while I dealt with Calican.

Against anyone else, the kid would probably have put up a decent fight. Against a trained Mandalorian... well, there weren't a lot of beings out there who could. It was over almost before it began, and when the hangar stopped echoing I moved out from cover toward the _Crest_.

“It's clear,” I called quietly. Udesla slid smoothly out from under the ramp, Munchkin held protectively to her chest, cuffs notwithstanding. No, she was very definitely _not_ a civilian. “You alright?”

“Yes.” She sounded grumpy. I understood; I wasn't too pleased with things at the moment either. I ran a finger over Munchkin's ear while my helmet sensors gave them both a quick once over. Good. No injuries. I took a bit of extra care undoing her cuffs – she had slightly protruding bone spurs on the knobs of her wrists, and I didn't want to catch them. “That idiot had the _audacity_ to hit me with a stun bolt.”

I chuckled and suppressed the urge to hug her, tiny spitfire that she was. I patted her arm lightly and moved toward Calican's body, coming up with his wallet a moment later.

“So. I guess that means you didn't get paid.” Peli tried and failed to not sound disappointed, which got another smile from under my helmet. Credits were the one constant in the galaxy. I stood and upended the wallet into her hands.

“That cover me?”

“Yeah...” She looked more than a little surprised. “Yeah, that – that covers you.”

“Thank you.” I gave her a nod, then headed back up the ramp. Second attempt on the kid in a week; time to keep moving.

~~*~~


	6. Chapter 6

“This is a bad idea,” I muttered, shutting down the holocomm. Ranzar Malk was the _last_ person I wanted to be doing a job for, but we needed the credits. I still had a few minutes before we came out of hyperspace; might as well make sure Udesla and the kid knew to keep a low profile.

“Everything alright?” She was giving me a studious look, like she knew I was on edge. How did she _do_ that?

“Yeah.” I started undoing one of the knots on her hammock, intending to tuck it aside and minimize evidence of passengers. “This job... it's not with the most, uh, upstanding of citizens,” I continued. The rope came free and I started folding the hammock and associated bedding back against the bulkhead.

“You don't want them to know about me or Munchkin if you can avoid it.” Astute little thing.

“That's right.” I caught movement in my peripherals and looked over to see her picking up the handful of her things she'd left out. “I want you both to stay in the bunk. Keep the door closed, and the kid asleep if at all possible.”

She looked over at the sleeping bundle in it's own makeshift hammock and pulled a face. “I'll try. I can't promise he'll stay down, though.”

“Just do the best you can.” I finished tying back the hammock as the timer chimed. “Here we go. Remember, keep the door shut.”

“I will.” I was already halfway up the ladder at that point.

~~*~~

“Well now,” Mayfeld crooned. Burg had managed to get the bunk door open in the course of our... disagreement, and all eyes were now on Udesla and Munchkin. He reached in and plucked the kid from Udesla's lap, which made her narrow her eyes and slide out after him. “What do we have here? What, some kind of pet? I didn't take you for the type.”

“Something like that.” Good, I sounded calm, controlled. I didn't know enough about Mayfeld to be overly worried about him handling the kid, not with Udesla so close, but Xi'an...

“He's not,” she hissed. She wasn't exactly a large woman, but next to Udesla she looked huge in comparison. The smaller woman glanced at her, then returned her attention to Mayfeld with a dismissive air. Xi'an snarled, which made Burg laugh.

Udesla slid her gaze over Burg, also dismissively. Who the hell had she _been_ in her past life to look at this group like it wasn't worth her time? The Devaronian, however, didn't take kindly to being treated like a mouse droid. Squaring up against her, he reached for Udesla's throat.

Again, this tiny little slip of a woman moved faster than she had any right to, darting under Burg's reach and dropping him to his knees with two swift kicks to the backs of said joints. She paused for half a second, then flipped him up and over her shoulder onto his back for good measure, resting a booted foot on one of his horns as she scanned the group.

“Is there a problem here?” She asked softly. The only response she got was stunned silence – Burg was easily three times her size, and she'd dropped him like it was nothing. “No? Excellent.” She deftly retrieved Munchkin from Mayfeld's slack grip and disappeared back into the bunk, the door sliding closed behind her.

I was saved from trying to inconspicuously adjust my armor by that damn droid yanking the _Crest_ out of hyperspace and throwing us around the hold in the pre-planned flight pattern to avoid detection.

Mayfeld shot the closed bunk a look of impressed hunger before dropping into the prison transport. I suppressed the urge to shoot him. For the time being.

~~*~~


End file.
